We began work on the project two years ago, aiming to create a responsive platform for interactive books that would help university presses share long-form monographs through an appealing and elegant interface. After many meetings and planning discussions, and following 1300+ commits to our public code repository, the initial version of the platform is ready for review.

On the beta site, you will find a selection of projects from the University of Minnesota Press that may be read, annotated, highlighted, and shared through social media. These include two recently published full-length scholarly books, a selection from the Forerunners: Ideas First series, and four projects just beginning to take shape on the platform:

Each project has a homepage that presents an overview of the text, provides a quick link to the text, aggregates recent activity, showcases the evolution of the project, and shares resources—images, videos, files, PDFs, image collections—that have been added to the text. Images that were part of the print version will appear in-line; resources that have been added for the Manifold edition will appear to the left of the text. Texts are responsive and may be read on any device, though the mobile versions are not yet fully featured. Please note that while we will make an effort to retain annotations and highlights left on the beta platform, we cannot guarantee their preservation.

Though the beta version only includes Minnesota publications, the platform is being designed so that any press or interested scholar can install Manifold, customize the platform with specific colors and logos, and publish work through the administrative dashboard. Manifold is capable of ingesting a variety of formats—ePub, HTML, Google Docs, Markdown, Microsoft Word—immediately transforming them into interactive web publications.

For a longer introduction to the project, please read “Building Manifold,” by Project Co-PIs Doug Armato and Matthew K. Gold. To learn more about the technology behind the platform, please read “A Technical Introduction to Manifold” by Manifold Lead Developer Zach Davis.